I sit in J-’s office while he printed up more of my zines. I am here knowing that we will soon be joining the most prestigious left-wing academic and US foreign policy expert for lunch. J- had talked with a professor in the history department regarding joining Noam and him for lunch. J- did this with the primary objective that the student, G-, who brought Noam to campus have some special contact with him during his very short visit to their school. After his participation in the Seattle WTO protests in 1999, G- spent 2 years corresponding with Noam in order to potentially alter his fellow students lives.
While I wait, I read J-’s dissertation and find similarities and differences between it and Gardens of Resistance. I understand our intentions to be very similar, to culminate our understandings of theory, namely critical theory, and how it relates to our practice�(praxis?). Also, we both recognize the unfortunate separation between the two and how that plays out in our respective circles. Although these intentions are shared and are recognizable, I think of the different audiences to which our writing caters. I think of the different languages that our writing uses. I do not have much time to consider other secondary questions.
As we descend the steep stairs from his office, I feel my stomach turn. Surprised, I realize that I feel a bit nervous. Difficulty sleeping, a bit of hunger, and my usual morning coffee is not helping. At 11:30, we go to the hall that Noam will be speaking in and reserve seats. Noam’s speech starts at 1:00 and people are already trickling in.
We are the first to arrive at the cafeteria of the group that we expect to meet for lunch. We go into the faculty lounge to find that it is empty and not yet open. I looked around the student cafeteria and start getting really hungry. Back outside J- begins conversing with another professor, S-, who will also be at lunch. Apparently, he is a leftist Middle East Policy Expert and is a colleague of Noam, yet he had not seen him in about 5 years. I am speaking to one of S-’s students when he warns J- that this lunch is intended for he and Noam to talk. I think that it may have surprised him that we were invited to the lunch and he wanted to prevent interruptions in conversation. Soon, G-, the student activist that had brought Noam to the school joins them and soon after that, I join them, as well. G- soon leaves to see if his family had arrived.
I had heard from one of S-’s students that we had something in common; we both live in co-housing. I start conversation with S- about this and soon find out that he is also a bicyclist. While the content of our discussion isn’t unusual, having a conversation with this man feels humorously difficult because he is so distracted and nervous. He is so nervous, in fact, that I become totally at ease, finding it very funny the way that he prepares to meet this “celebrity”. His behavior is so obvious and extreme that I was able to laugh at that same tendency to hero-worship in myself.
Finally, Noam arrives with another professor who apparently has conservative politics (he I found quite friendly and engaged). We went into the faculty lounge and after the really petty logistic of establishing which department would cover the $4.95 lunches, we get some food and are seated. Initially 5 of us are at the table and immediately, S- engages Noam in a nearly exclusive, very quiet, conversation that the rest of us strain to hear.
When G- returns, J- interrupts to introduce those of us haven’t yet met Noam. When Noam heard G-’s name and shook his hand, he lit up and smiled in a way that I didn�t expect from his quiet and thus far serious demeanor. It was the first bit of real “humanness” that I see. The only other time that I saw the same kind of engagement is when I later inquire about his son that lives near me. The rest of the lunch that we spend together is a somewhat mundane and disjointed discussion of recent gossip of the great powers of the US and S-’s theories about this.
Seeing that there was little room for a real connection with Noam or each other in this context. J-, G- and I leave at about 12:40 to return to the hall that Noam will speak.
The talk is good simply because Noam is a good speaker. He is mostly just funny and full of facts. I especially appreciate his (self-referential?) disdain of educated rationalizations that are keeping “the system” working. His topic is 9-11 and beyond and he logically breaks down the “War on Terrorism” as an obvious hoax.
He makes the lefty-pleasing argument that US terrorist actions (probably even “war-crimes”, he alludes) are allowed because US powers have protected themselves by applying a description of “counter-terrorist” to those actions. Many examples can be found in the Middle East and Central America where US actions were clearly NOT “counter” to any specific terrorist action or to any clear “terrorists”, but instead against already oppressed people on land that the US had some economic interest.
I found something missing very clearly in my lunch with him and also in his speech. What I found missing in the speech is the same thing that I can imagine feeling missing from a speech by Ralph Nader or a politician or another intellectual that is not anti-authoritarian. I felt left without a full critique. A discussion of international relations took place without any acknowledgment of how an international relation really relates to me beyond the fact that the puppeteers are still in power playing war games with individuals as their pawns. While Nader advocates consumer “watchdogs”, Chomsky advocates political “watchdogs”.
Because they are both figureheads for leftists, they are bound to their own schtick within the leftist “movement”, as well. The ramifications of this pheonomenon are complex, the most obvious is that a speech like this will only serve to reinforce its own importance. It also leads to a “movement” that doesn’t really move and a dependency on “authority” within the left. These factors and the simple limits of the content of the “movement” itself serve to legitimate and reinforce the larger system itself.
I have no logical disagreement of the content of the speech, but I left the speech (and lunch especially) feeling like Noam was made of a fabric more similar to the politicians than to myself. J- later describes what I was missing as a richer anti-authoritarianism in which one doesn’t turn into the “photo-negative” of that which one is criticizing. This clearly may be a trap of anyone that gains the kind of “authority” that he has, maybe of anyone working “in the system”.
I was saddened by Chomsky’s obvious disdain for the “powers that be” and his recipricol enslavement to them. He must go to many places and have needy academics try to impress him, get his feedback and keep the level of conversation confined to that very circle of oppressors that he criticizes. Chomsky, as an academic was reduced to existing as a walking dictionary. He became a processor through which S- was able to feed his new and especially relevant information.
I do not know if he wanted to talk to the other people that were at his table for lunch. His mannerisms told me that he did, indeed. His facial expressions said that he would rather engage as a human, as a potential friend, as someone that is dynamic rather than as an expert that could only serve to gather data and fit it to his “political watchdog” expertise. I wonder what was going through his mind. Had he committed to having a conversation with S- that he felt entitled to keep? Did he not feel like he had enough power to redirect the conversation to be all-inclusive? Did he not care?
I could have usurped the conversation, certainly J-, G- and I could have. Although I didn’t know about S-’s comment to J- that essentially asked us to stay out, I did not try very hard to change the situation, although I did not (could not?) want to be a part of the existing conversation. I felt subject to S- and Noam’s power as prestigious academics. I felt subject to J-’s relationships with his colleagues at the university.
I felt frustrated by Chomsky’s academic assumption of the primary importance of this watchdogging function and a seemingly traditional history lesson. At one point in our lunch, he sadly noted that college level students could not name 19th century presidents. An understanding of the history of oppression, genocide and political economic development are useful and Noam has done so much for educating folks about this. But, I am glad that college students and others have better things to engage in than projects that might have anything to do with dead presidents.
Noam closes the question and answer period following his speech with a question that he distorted into “Do we have hope?” He claims that yes, there is hope. Why? Because things that JFK would have been able to get away with 50 years ago could not be gotten away with today. In other words, our watchdog efforts are so great today that we have hope.
I agree that knowing is better than not knowing and being able to see is better than not being able to see. What I am not convinced of is that the methods of subordination in the state are not clever enough to accommodate for this. I am not convinced that knowing and seeing gives enough people a power to have practice that doesn’t support the very things that they are seeing and knowing. I am not convinced that knowing and seeing are doing anything to change any course of events at present nor that they will in the future. Critiques like Chomsky’s are useful in deconstructing ideology and understanding our situations.
But, the knowledge is not the practice and the only practice that does not support the system of oppression is one of resistance. Therefore, it is not here where I see hope lying.
This “Watchdogging” is part of a spectacle that is only on some level supporting this same system of oppression. It is actually the spectacle once removed. It is not the media, but the academic media about the media. It is not the directly political actions or speeches, but a driver of the counter-politics and actions. This ends up being a rallying cry to sign a petition, to go on a march. While these actions may be forms of resistance; in our cultural context, they are complacent, progressive forms of resistance at best.
What is the possibility of this function in serving radical change? In the best case these functions may be an initial insight or opening that leads to a further and further questioning of the world and our relationships in it. In the worst, these functions serve to pacify leftists with the powerful and rightous feeling of a new understanding that is only applied to old models. I am reluctant to discount protest politics completely, but the limits are glaring and it is only until we move out of the realm of this spectacle that we can be fully engaged humans.
Unlike Noam, I only see hope bedded completely outside of the manufactured world that he criticizes. I have no previous generations of experience to compare it, as he compares the Kennedy era to our present day. But, I have my own experience, my own personal shifts in politics and I have reflections on my lunch with Noam that do a fine job of illustrating our different opinions on hope.
It is in the celebration of life and livelihood outside of this spectacle and the “powers that be” that I find hope. It is through the engagement of “politics” through relationships and daily life that are the foundation for self-control and collaboration where I see hope being actualized in autonomous zones of resistance. It is only here where we can truly use our imagination to freely participate in projects that give me hope for new forms of cultures, guilds, and “organizations” that are outside of the domination of the corrupt, which are necessarily outside of the domination of the state.
I don’t find hope in learning about or recreating the tools or experiences of the oppressor. I have little interest in using their tools against them. Instead, I have interest in the DIY creation of new tools and experiences with our neighbors and friends in the here and now. I have interest in creating local self-reliant networks that make the “powers that be” inept and the possibility of recreating the powers that be meaningless.
